After years spent as dubstep’s noir bizarre uncle, Kevin Martin is getting reacquainted along with his authentic vocation: maker of head music for headbangers. His seventh album as the Bug, 2021’s Fireplace, was a welcome return to the corrosive industrial ragga of his ’00s output, after years of desolation trip-hop and Black-Ark-gone-Black-Lodge murkscapes. The Zonal venture reconnected him with Godflesh pummeler Justin Broadrick for some scorched-Earth drones. A pair of essential reissues of the duo’s aggro-illbient collaboration Techno Animal emerged courtesy of utmost metallic label Relapse Data. The newest launch from the ever-prolific funcrusher makes his final 15 years of dystopian dub and gray-toned “dream noise” sound like a Carnival cruise to Montego Bay.
Machine is an anthology of 5 digital EPs Martin constructed as “flooring weapons” for his 10-bassbin Strain events at Berlin’s Gretchen membership and different gigs. Martin’s first non-collaborative instrumental outing because the Bug, Machine is impressed by the oppressive quantity of each reggae soundsystem clashes and Swans exhibits, a full-contact sound arsenal made to churn bowels, vibrate molecules, and push air. Martin stays a grasp of post-apocalyptic textures and all method of swirling digital gunk, however whereas nuance is right here in droves, it’s not precisely the draw. Like different uniquely excessive albums—Napalm Dying’s Scum, Merzbow’s Pulse Demon, or the Cherry Level’s Night time of the Bloody Tapes—it feels just like the victory of some form of arms race. Martin’s bass tones are preposterously low. His basslines are kaiju-sized, rubbery, detuned, screwed sounding. Opener “Annihilated (Pressure of Gravity)” is lurchy to a level the place it seems like Korn’s bassist pinch-hitting for Flipper. Machine feels unsafe at any quantity.
The 12-track model, out there on streaming companies or two LPs of splattery vinyl, is an ample distillation of the venture’s mixture of hypnosis and malevolence. The sluggy tempo, the Jah Wobble-on-Codeine basslines, and the cavernous, virtually bodily echos make it “dub music” in probably the most basic sense, however Martin’s palette extra carefully resembles clanging factories, smoking engines, foghorns, freight elevators, hissing steam, and scratchy Primary Channel data. “Shafted (Legal guidelines of Attraction/Repulsion)” begins with digital church bells—a contemporary retelling of the primary Black Sabbath LP. “Illness (Slowly Dying)” sounds prefer it’s been cast from vinyl static; “Vertical (By no means See You Once more)” appears like an Ampex reel being drawn and quartered; and “Departed (Left the Physique Behind)” unnerves with some type of distorted digital wail trying to make contact. Machine exists someplace between the glint of misplaced reminiscence and the adrenaline-fueled panic of impending doom: It crackles like hauntology, however electrifies like ghostbusting.
